The Northwestern  crow is normally a gregarious animal. When I was engaged in writing one day  a broken winged crow walked  up the road path in front of my window.  That waddling bow-legged strut was altered by the broken right wing that dragged on the stones of the path. As I watched,  its walk was slow and deliberate. It knew I thought,  that it was doomed.
        The crow  had a stoic look on its face that said it all. I don't understand the entire multiple complex phrasing of the Northwestern crow,  but I know body language pretty well, and I knew that crow knew, it was walking  into the abyss. It was silent. I never thought I would see it again and put the crow  out of my mind.
          I was working in the orchard two days later and there it was. Still alive and hopping from bush to bush for cover. Hiding to avoid detection from the predators, both its own kind and the raptors. Still doomed. It doesn't seem fair.
         You or I may break an arm or leg and it's usually an inconvenience ;  rarely ever a tragedy, and hardly ever are we doomed. If we were, we would not likely bear our fate with the stoic silence and grim recognition of the injured crow.  Natural justice and Mother Nature. Crows gave no quarter and received none The Northwestern crow should have been chosen as the emblematic bird of British Columbia rather than the awful Stellers Jay.  The crow is a soldier !








      

 The wooden prairie elevators are now an iconic reminder of a special past,  and part of  a way of life when industrial farming was nonexistent. My first summer job when I was 15 was cleaning out the grain dust in the bottom of the bins in the Pool elevator for Bill McClugan, the Pool operator. We lived in the railway station across the tracks from the elevator which also had an attached annex. My brother Ken used to sit in the front office of the station and shoot rats around the annex with his 22 when dad wasn't around. One day he aimed too low and the bullet ricocheted through the window. That ended his rat hunting.
     The elevators announced each town in large letters  to those strangers that passed through on the passenger train, a signal to the world that was important to us, even though it was fleeting information as the flyer raced through and about all they saw of us !
       Each elevator had a grated weight scale at the entrance where the grain truck was weighed when full and then again when it was empty. Grain was dumped into the grate;  samples, when dumping, were taken for grading during the dumping and then the grain was carried up to the top of the elevator by elevating buckets to one of the 16 ,80 foot high bins and poured out into the bin selected.  During the time after harvest, when the grain was loaded in boxcars, it was not taken directly from the bottom of the bin. As a consequence, the detritus, rat droppings, chaff and dust settled to the bottom of the bin over the winter and spring to three or five feet deep. It was a dusty job shoveling and cleaning the bins dust out in preparation for the harvest to come.
        That was my first summer job. The material got in your hair, clothes, and nostrils. I was happy with my first paying job,  but I understand why Bill didn't want to do it. I was strong and never got sick. There was no running water in our town so our water had to be carried from the town pump and heated on the stove top. My water in the galvanized tub in the kitchen looked like porridge after the bath each day. I may have acquired a somewhat jaded view of the romance of the prairie grain elevator but many could thank me for the absence of rat droppings dust  in their wheat flour to be.
      
     

In the early 70's my hair was thinning. The pianist was off with the children on a trip and I was having dinner with my parents. My mother said to me that I might look better if I had a permanent wave. At that time I had a few adventuresome colleagues who recently had adopted long curly hair. Big hair in the 70's was becoming a statement for men.
       My mother knew nothing about statements. She just noticed my bald spot. She said she had a friend who did Toni Home Permanents.  "Sure  " I said,  feeling cavalier, " Why not. "  The next day I had my perm. When I was sitting down in my parents home and being worked on , as I looked in the mirror with big curlers in place I realized how much I looked like my mother. My perm worked out pretty well, curly but not too tight. a bit bigger hair, and my  having the appearance of being somewhat risque.
     Some people asked me later if I was having mid-life trouble. George Robson, a senior gynecologist asked, " Are you as horny as you look ?'"  When the pianist got home she was thunderstruck, but amused and reflective. She wasn't sure she should go away too often. I appeared to have made some half-assed attempt to join a youth movement where I probably didn't belong.
       I remembered that the ancient Jews believed Samson's power came from his hair. People may have resented big hair in Samson's time for its supposedly regenerative power and production of singular strength. Certainly Delilah destroyed the power of Samson by having him shorn of his locks.
       I went back after a year to my conventional haircut after my 14 year old grew his hair below his shoulders. Trichotollimalia can strike you when you are careless and thoughtless around your mother, and I was never stronger  or  more popular with my big hair.

William Safire died a while back and the Economist Obituary recorded some of his lexicographical tidbits that I have taken liberty with. He analyzed nabobs, nattering and negativism but didn't include nitpicking. Certainly in politics at the Federal level in Canada today, the opposition, all three of them, are guilty of a certain degree of these elements. I don't think the present government is any less guilty when it was in opposition. In fact all levels of government are guilty of this and the media thrives as a result of all of it. Gloating is good ; schadenfreude is splendid.
       When you are in the business of government or opposition of whatever stripe, it is so easy to fall into the habit of the four N's.  Both the media and the partisans promote them!
       What if, wonder of wonders,  electability were put on the back burner for a period of time in order that the public good may be served by genuine collaborative action on their part. Many have forgotten the true definition of the adjective, "politic".  Sometimes we should trash the noun "politics" , for the adjective. Unfortunately the voting public has been robbed by the hyperbole of the nattering nabobs of nitpicking negativism and joined them. What the Hell !

Possibly the most read book on the Art of Loving was written by Erich Fromm 60 odd years ago and is still unsurpassed as the most sensible and easily understood concept leading to effective and rewarding relationships.  The structure of love based on the four foundational hallmarks  of  Knowledge, Care, Responsibility and Respect is so self-evident that people who think are amazed at the lack of mystery to it all.
      Knowledge means simply the desire to know the object of love in all their aspects in order to meet their needs.
       Care means simply to supply those needs to the best off one's ability.
       Responsibility means consistent and reliable action towards the loved one,  since love is action.
       Respect is accepting the unique nature of the love object.
     The overpowering sensation of love, never of course to be denied, will only last in its best measure if it develops latterly from the foundational hallmarks  That's all there is to it !
      However, easier said and done oh man.  You still have to manage to sort out your own path,  wending through the wreckage of your brain trash that has accumulated over the years that you piled up and accumulated to protect yourself.  You have to learn, as in any other skill you might develop, however imperfectly.
       I used to think that this was far too rational approach to love : a left brain context and purely mechanical,  lacking what we called romance. Let it be known now that love is learned. There is nothing wrong with rational. We weren't given a brain for nothing.
     

Though not as well known as the Cypress hills, the  Touchwood Hills in Saskatchewan are another height of land left by the glacier as it receded. The Touchwood hills are the point of land on which Henry Kelsey, the great overland explorer,  turned back east after his epic travel  (1690  to 1692 ),  a century before any other white man visited the area. There is a cairn on a hilltop in Punnichy to mark his furthest point of exploration.
      I grew up in the Touchwood Hills.  Our land for the little town of Lestock became sequestered from the Muskowekwan reserve when the Grand Trunk Railway was built and a depot was needed. The original land treaty for it was signed by the Cree Chief Muscowequan in 1874 at Fort Qu'Appelle with the other Chiefs of Little and Big Touchwood Hills and the Grand Trunk.
      My friend and I from Lestock. played midget hockey with the Indian team  from the Oblate Father's  Mission School.  We were all 15. The Cree Nation boys from the Muscowekwan reserve welcomed the two of us and we felt part of things. There is nothing like sport to unite young men. We traveled extensively in the Misson Panel truck to play hockey in southeast Saskatchewan. We were a good team but we only had two forward lines and two defensemen. We must have been in good shape.
        The outdoor rink we practiced on was at the Mission  and the roads were often impassable on the reserve. A local batchelor farmer from Lestock liked to watch hockey and took the two of us out to the Mission on the back of his tractor. As we stood on the back of his tractor, wind whistling by our cheeks,  tractor bucking the drifts, He told us it didn't snow in Burnaby. He went there every year after Christmas. As we  held onto the tractor seat for dear life, I kept  thinking to myself, ," One day,  I will go to Burnaby."
         

.My brother Ken,  four years younger than me,  has  a more accurate long-term memory of the events of our youth than I have.  Whereas I recall the emotional effects of the events on me in vivid detail, he has the greater acuity for the events themselves.  I knew enough  to never argue with him because he was almost always right.
       For example, my father's brother, Edgie, a corporal in the South Saskatchewan regiment,  I knew was captured in the Dieppe Raid during the second world war and spent the next almost three and a half years as a prisoner of war in Stalag 8 B in Germany.  Ken's son and I were speaking of this recently and I told him that while in prison Edgie had wagered with a fellow prisoner  that he could swallow a dead mouse they had for a dollar..  Ken interrupted me to say I was wrong and that he had bet that he could  bite the mouse in half for a dollar. He apparently did! Now neither Ken nor I have talked about this, to my knowledge, for  60 years, but  his superior acuity does not take away from the horror I felt in learning of the event and whether biting or swallowing, is beside the point. The point is the raw and outlandish behavior of the state of young men as prisoners of war and my feeling of revulsion.  So far this story has nothing elevated to teach or learn.
        But I have been reading Roger Lundin's book, Emily Dickinson and the Art of Belief.  He says, "----for her,  (Emily) memory meant the recollection of intense experiences or encounters, rather than the rituals of general commemoration."   In addition he says, "  It usually involved a revival of sensory impress. She was only intrigued by the memory of what went on within the dwelling of her conscious life."  I think that summarizes the difference between Ken and me,  memory as feelings and acuity.
     Ken was a journalist and a school teacher.  He saw and remembered the details of what went on, vividly and accurately. My recollection of the same set of  facts that we would have heard so very long ago is completely colored by my  recall of the feelings. The acuity is swept away by the feelings which are the  more powerful in me and others.
       In a world today of law ,testimony, false memory syndrome, accusation, redemption, recall, regrets, hurt, loss, acuity, recompense,  redress, damnation and justice ,  and the passage of time;  it requires we stick with the reporter,   rather than the poet.
       

Some of the honey bees overnight, on selected flowers! Sometimes a flower's anatomy provides a quality petal cradle adjacent to the bee pantry. The bees are choosy where they sleep.
    Jomanda is a ball dahlia that has smallish upturned edges  to the petals that are form-fitting for the demanding bee body and suitable for an overnight retreat. It also keeps them close to the pollen larder. They are worker bees so they don't have to go home at night to a mate if they are busy bees. but just have to bring home food in the daylight.
      If they don't bother going home, they can start early in the morning which is admirable in the eyes of the workaholic, though I found this llttle lad a bit sluggish at 6;30 that morning. I roused him but he only showed modest enthusiasm about leaving.  When he left, the cradle was empty except for a messy dropping or two.
      We had bee hives early on, but then encountered escape variants that Mother Nature harboured in tree hollows or some dry refuge. Whatever! They were welcome here and perhaps had escaped the possibly mite-vectored disease, Colony Collapse Disorder that has assailed so many of their colleagues in close quarters.  While we celebrate their hard work bringing home the bacon, we know that fresh air, sunshine and freedom from crowding is the healthy answer for them, and  frankly , for all of us!  We are also less likely to succumb to Colony Collapse Disorder  if we embrace that same environment and spend more time in the flower cradle,  freedom and sunshine.

David Lowenthal wrote a book in 1985 called The Past is a Foreign Country. It's a wonderful book describing history , memory and reliquary amongst other things ;  plus the desire to relive or collect the past.  One of our daughters,  two of our granddaughters and the pianist and I , made apple cider , a day in time past, from some of the good Gravenstein windfalls. We made 30 quarts of juice heated 200 degrees to pasteurize.
     Our press is a 30 year old hand crank and our routine was long established. The design of the press is probably hundreds of years earlier. The apple mash makes good compost. We have a country kitchen and we press on the grass outside the kitchen door so we are neat and don't make a mess. This link to the past is lived by us in a real sense. The soft ware we call a brain, somewhere, has a face book page that records my father's farm where he grew up, and my grandfather's orchard. It is indelible and structural.  My granddaughters, as sure as the sun rises tomorrow, will one day press their own apples in their own  orchard.
       After  all that cider pressing,  we went to an old folks home after church the next day.  Some are blind and some have short term memory, but they respond to the old chestnuts we sang in the past that a long term memory always allows to reappear.  Old ones like  "Jesus loves me , this I know" , but  now modified for oldsters as " Jesus loves me, this I know, though my hair is white as snow." . We try to get "With it " !  They also like  " In the garden. "  I liked that song too since both my mother's and dad's funeral's had that hymn at their request.
       The old folks have intact long term memory. For them and for me, the past is not a foreign country. These linkages to the past for me are evocative of the connection  to my grandparents and my parents. I do not long for the two-holer, or the town pump, or the kerosene lamp, nor do I wish to see flypaper any more. But I don't believe the past is a foreign country.
      
      

My mum and dad in retirement lived in a high-rise rental unit in Lotus City for a number of years. There were a large number of rental units for almost exclusively elderly people. My dad in his heyday had grown an abundant number of dahlia and gladiola and they missed the prospect of having cut flowers always available for their home. He spent half of his horticultural lifetime as well giving away flowers to all and sundry. Since I am a chip off the old block and have grown dahlia for a number of years in volume, but not glads, since deer eat those flowers and what's a glad without any bloom?
      I started taking dahlias to my parents in Lotus City once a week. My truck with dahlias was noted by residents of the high-rise and my parents asked if I could bring some to their friends. My donations were well recieived and after a while many of the other renters came for flowers, waiting in the parking lot on Wednesday when I arrived. Bringing dahlias for me was no big deal because  it saved me from deadheading in the plot.in another few days They all called me Dr. Flower.
       I'm not sure I liked the name, at the time, but I was younger and I do now. I was worried  it sounded like Dr. Dolittle or Mr. Rogers. The love of color and beauty by older people without gardens in a concrete apartment made that gift giving for me just nothing more than a continuation of my dad's generosity.
        My dad died, my mother moved to a nursing home, my old truck expired and I ended my flower toting activity.